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partaking of their sins and follies , seeking his own advantage or indulging his own vanity or malevolence , as the case may be , under pretence of patriotism and philanthropy . His selfishness is more loud and more vulgar than theirs , but equally shortsighted and mistaken . He is doing the very thing which so

deranges the social machine as to make it press with unnatural and unnecessary heaviness on the lowest class . He is drying up the oil which should lubricate the wheels , doing that for himself which , would he serve himself effectually , he must do for his brethren . Per the social system is not a real machine . Its well-being ebbs and flows with the rise and fall of human passions , and the right or wrong direction of human motives .

Man is the only being in the animal creation who attempts to live for himself . ^ The social instinct pervades orders of beings much lower than his own . In the insect world it is singularly prominent . Ants are fellow-workers and brethren , bearing each other ' s burdens , and thus reproving the selfishness of man just as their industry reproves his sloth . Bees are yet more brotherly , sworn Freemasons in fact , Masonic in their habits , and more than that , they have

Masons' hearts . "What is a bee without its common hive , Uncommon store , its common system of provision and defence ? The idea of an isolated " social" bee , living and buzzing and picking honey for itself ! It is painfully absurd . But man is more helpless even than the bee . No creature comes into the world so perfectly dependent upon others for a day ' s life—and as he is born , so he lives , a creature dependent on his fellow-creatures for all he wants to make him

healthy , comfortable , and happy . " How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough ' asks an ancient sage , " and that gloriethin the goad , and is occupied in these labours , and whose talk is of bullocks ? He giveth his mind to make furrows , and is diligent to give the kine fodder . " So every carpenter , smith , and potter is described as understanding and minding his own particular business , — " all these trust

to their hands , and every one is wise in his work . "Without these cannot a city be inhabited . " True , " they shall not be sought for in public council , nor yet high in the congregation ; they shall not sit on the judges' seat , nor understand the sentence of judgment ; they cannot declare justice and judgment , and they shall not be found where

parables are spoken : —but they will maintain tie state of the world . " And as it was two or three thousand years ago , so is it now and ever will be . Everyman has his post and his place ; whether he occupies it with high and liberal thoughts , or whether " all his desire is in his craft , " the effects of his labour will be felt at large . The impulse which he may have given to society will never die . It will affect every future generation as well as his own . It has raised a w ave in the ocean of

time , which , whether it may have been , in its beginning , an overwhelming billow , as in the case of the hero , or whether it be a mere undulation , as in the instance of the obscure artizan , it will never cease to move till , diminished to a silent ripple , it breaks on the shore of eternity . But there is in all this movement a reflex wave ever